“Coffee essence, more like.”

“Might as well try it when I get back. Behave yourself now.”

He pulled a steel-grey felt hat down almost to his ears, put on a belted raincoat, and looking rather like the film director’s idea of a private detective, he went ashore.

Mrs. Cuddy remained, anxious and upright, on her bunk.

Aubyn Dale’s dearest friend, looking through the porthole, said with difficulty, “Darling, it’s boiling up for a peashuper-souper. I think perhaps we ought to weep ourselves away.”

“Darling, are you going to drive?”

“Naturally.”

“You will be all right, won’t you?”

“Sweetie,” she protested, “I’m never safer than when I’m plastered. It just gives me that little something other drivers haven’t got.”

“How terrifying.”

“To show you how completely in control I am, I suggest that it might be better to leave before we’re utterly fogged down. Oh, dear! I fear I am now going into a screaming weep. Where’s my hanky?”

She opened her bag. A coiled mechanical snake leaped out at her, having been secreted there by her lover, who had a taste for such drolleries.

This prank, though it was received as routine procedure, a little delayed their parting. Finally, however, it was agreed that the time had come.

“ ’Specially,” said their dearest male friend, “as we’ve killed the last bottle. Sorry, old boy. Bad form. Poor show.”

“Come on,” said their dearest girl friend. “It’s been smashing, actually. Darling Auby! But we ought to go.”

They began elaborate leave-takings but Aubyn Dale said he’d walk back to the car with them.

They all went ashore, talking rather loudly, in well-trained voices, about the fog, which had grown much heavier.

It was now five past eleven. The bus had gone, the solitary taxi waited in its place. Their car was parked further along the wharf. They stood around it, still talking, for some minutes. His friends all told Dale many times how much good the voyage would do him, how nice he looked without his celebrated beard, how run down he was, and how desperately the Jolyon swimsuit programme would sag without him. Finally they drove off waving and trying to make hip-hip-hooray with their horn.